Month: November 2014

“I always say Advent is my favorite season of the church year, and then Lent comes around…”

“Yeah, I think they’re good seasons for melancholy people.”

“Mmm. Yes.”

* * *
The world as it is now is broken and messy and lost, y’all. Creation laments. The martyrs ask “How long?” Even now in the country where I live, there are people who have no knowledge of God who know things are wrong and are meant to be different. They’re crying out for justice. And they’re crying out for mercy.

And more than that, much of my heart is still broken and messy and lost. There are too many shrines to dark deities set up in a house that should be wholly dedicated to the true God. My voice gets added to the chorus crying out for things to be fixed–for me to be fixed.

The waiting doesn’t only feel like ages; it has been ages. Immanuel has come and ransomed us, but we’re still looking down the road waiting to see Him come walking back to tell us that the place He’s preparing is finally ready.

Even still, we get called to straighten up and raise up our heads, because our redemption is drawing near–not just in some distant future, but it keeps getting nearer and nearer. “The word itself is very near you,” writes Paul–“it is in your heart and in your mouth.” And the Word repairs us from the inside out. And one day He’ll show us what He did. In the meantime, we keep looking up at Him. And we wait, and we rejoice.

I am a city girl by temperament,
So I have no idea what it’s like
To get in a tractor and plow a field
For several hours on end.
I don’t know what it’s like
To drive those same fields and
Gather in all of your soybeans or corn
Or wheat or whatever.

Maybe it’s good thinking time,
Out in the air that’s mostly fresh
Except for the exhaust fumes from your
Large machinery, staring but not really
Looking at all your crops.

Maybe it’s the same way I feel while
Driving through the middle of nowhere,
That hollowed-out place where your brain
Has no room for thoughts because it’s so busy
Trying to keep you from crashing into a tree.

Or maybe it’s the way I feel now,
The waiting, the work, and the unsettled feeling
That there’s still more to do tomorrow.